Free Indiscretions by Elizabeth Adler Page B

night? Please say yes. We could go to the little osteria I know in the hills. You’d love it there—Papa Rizzoli does the cooking. At this time of year they’ll have a big fire blazing in the hearth—applewood, it smells like heaven. And there’s candlelight and wine from their own vineyards, and it’s my favorite place. I would love to show it to you, India.”
    His voice was persuasive, but India steeled herself against his coaxing.
    “I have something else on tomorrow night,” she answered vaguely.
    “Then the next night, or the next. Just tell me when.”
    “Call me.” India retreated behind the big double doors, closing them with a soft thud behind her. She leaned against them, listening until she heard his footsteps cross the pavement and the slam of the car door. The engine started at first touch and the little car hummed away. Only then did she walk toward the lighted hallway. What would it have been like to go to the osteria with him? It sounded like the perfect romantic setting for an evening with a man you liked, or might fall in love with. The scent of applewood, candlelight flickering on ancient whitewashed stone walls, wine straight from the vineyard … and Aldo Montefiore with his firm hands and strong profile.…
    The particular high shrilling call of the Italian telephonesystem penetrated her consciousness as she idled her way dreamily up the stairs.
    A phone was ringing. Her phone! India leapt the last few stairs two at a time, fumbling with her key in the lock. Slamming the door behind her she rushed across the room, flinging her satchel onto the sofa as she went. Maybe it was Fabrizio. Maybe he’d decided to slip away from his guests and spend a few stolen hours here with her.
    “Yes.” Her voice had a breathy, expectant quality.
    “Signorina India Haven?”
    “Si. Pronto.”
    “A call for you, signorina, from Los Angeles.”

2
25 October
    Jenny Haven was dead. The headlines splashed across the newspaper in bold black print with painful finality. The photograph reproduced below showed a laughing blond woman, no longer as young as she was doing her best to appear, but nevertheless beautiful. The line of the jaw might have been a little less perfect than it used to be, the well-known bosom a little less firm, but the eyes weresmiling with Jenny’s familiar wide, gray-blue gaze, and the full mouth curved in the enticing smile that contrived to be both demure and provocative at the same time. And neither face nor body owed a single point to Hollywood’s finest cosmetic surgical scalpels. Jenny had had a fear of hospitals and doctors and the idea of voluntarily submitting herself to the knife had filled her with such horror that even when the edges of her beauty had begun to blur and it had seemed necessary because of her career to “help things along a little,” as her agent had suggested, she had been unable to bring herself to do it. Jenny Haven had been the perfect combination of corn-fed middle America and Hollywood glitz. She was the blond girl-next-door and the unattainable star who lived in a rarified atmosphere of blue skies and perpetual sunshine, limousines and lovers, the woman that young men around the world fantasized about possessing and young girls dreamed of becoming.
    Venetia folded the paper carefully so that she wouldn’t see that headline every time she glanced at it lying on the empty seat next to her. Especially the caption that ran across the top of the picture: “Jenny, the Golden Girl—Suicide?”
    Jenny had been fifty years old and they were still calling her a girl. “It’s because that’s the way they all remember her,” Paris had said. “It’s affection, Vennie, they’re not being unkind.” Paris had understood. And yet she was the only one who had
not
protested that it couldn’t be true. Paris had remained silent when Venetia and India had sworn it simply couldn’t be right, that Jenny, who loved life, would
never
have committed suicide. The